The Man in the Photo From Cairo
by Irina Samuels
Summary: Farid's mother has been kidnapped by Lock-nah, and he needs the help from either the O'Connells or Ardeth Bay to rescue her. The O'Connells are in Beijing. So, Ardeth it is. DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. If you recognize it, it's not mine.


_Farid Daniels and his best friend Benjamin Tanner were chasing one another around and around the house, playing a rousing game of hide-and-go-seek. Benjamin slid to a stop in front of the basement door, and Farid crashed into him, laughing._

_"Hey, Farid, what room does this door go to?" Ben asked, panting._

_Farid shrugged. "The basement," he said. "Mom doesn't like it when I go down there. She says it's cold and drafty, and that she just uses it as a storage room anyway. I've never been down there."_

_The two boys glanced at each other and grinned. "Let's go," they said in unison, and Farid pushed the heavy door open and tromped down the stairs, closely followed by Ben. _

_"Whoa, look at all this old stuff!" Ben exclaimed, staring around at all the dusty boxes piled in misshapen pyramids._

_"Huh," Farid said, "I wonder why Mom didn't want me coming down here." _

_"Whoa, Farid, CHECK THIS OUT!" Ben exclaimed, staring into a glass case._

_Farid turned to see what Ben was looking at. "Whoa," he said, his jaw dropping._

_In the glass case was a pair of silver knives, each one about as long as Farid's forearm. A heavy ammunition belt hung from a hook, next to a holster containing two Colt pistols._

_"Was your mom some kinda bounty hunter?" Ben asked, stroking the glass case with a childlike reverence._

_"I dunno," Farid replied, looking at the boxes stacked around the case. "She never mentioned anything…" He crossed the small floor space over to a box next to the case, labeled _Cairo, 1933._ He opened the box, and coughed as the smell of dust and mothballs attacked his nostrils. "Maybe this will give us some answers," he muttered, feeling like Sherlock Holmes, his favorite detective. He began leafing through the stacks of papers in the box, most of them covered in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. He pulled out several packets of the runes; several of them had sand stuck to the pages. Underneath the papers he found photographs._

_"Hm…" Farid said, stroking his chin in the way he always imagined Sherlock Holmes doing it. "What do we have here?"_

_Ben giggled and looked at the photos over Farid's shoulder. "Who are those people?" He asked. _

_"I don't know…" Farid muttered, turning over a photograph of a man, a woman, his mother, and a child standing in front of a truck in a desert. "It says here…_Rick, Evy, and Alex O' Connell, Cairo, 1933. _I've never met any of these people," he said to Ben, feeling worried. He and his mother had always told each other _everything. _Why had she hidden this from him?_

_"Farid, look at the guy in this picture!" Ben exclaimed, holding out the said photograph for Farid's inspection. It was a picture of his mother and a man with shoulder-length black hair. He was Arabic, and he had curious black tattoos on his cheekbones and forehead. He had his arm around Farid's mother, and they were smiling._

_Farid turned the photo over. "This one says…_Tanyalee Warren and Ardeth Bay, Cairo, 1933._ Hm. Look, Ben, this one was in a photo frame once," said Farid._

_"How can you tell?" Ben asked, sounding confused. _

_"See the creases in the edge? Those can only be made by a really tight frame," said Farid happily, feeling very Sherlock Holmes-ish. His momentary joy was dashed, however, by a deeper worry. "Why didn't Mom ever tell me about any of this stuff?" He muttered, more to himself than Ben._

_"Why don't you ask her?" Ben suggested, jerking his head toward the stairs indicatively._

_Farid shook his head quickly. "No way! We're not even supposed to be _down _here! How do you think she would feel if she knew we were _looking through her stuff?_"_

_"Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion," Ben said, sounding slighted._

_"Here…let's go back upstairs before my mom gets home," said Farid, putting everything from Cairo back in the box._

Farid remembered that day he found the Cairo Box so clearly. Now, it seemed like his life, and his mother's, depended on him finding one of these people in the photographs. He looked up the O' Connell's, but there were a lot of Rick O' Connell's in London. When he finally did discover the correct family, he was told that they were currently overseas, in Beijing. Farid didn't have time to go all the way to Beijing. He didn't have time to go to Cairo, either, but that was closer than China, so he decided to try there next. His mother's life might depend on it.

He still remembered that horrible night that the men in the red scarves came and took his mother away from him…was it really just a few days ago?

_"Farid…Farid…Farid, sweetie, wake up…" Tanyalee Daniels gently shook her son awake. _

_"Wha—what? Mom, it's three in the morning…can't I sleep…?"_

_"No, honey, you have to get up. Someone is in the house."_

_Those five little words made Farid wide awake._

_"What? Who?" He demanded in a whisper._

_"I don't know," Tanyalee replied, sounding agitated, "but I do know that they're not going to get my son."_

_"Get your…MOM! Are you crazy? I'm not leaving you here, with bad guys in the house! Why didn't you call the police?" Farid's voice rose dangerously._

_"They cut the telephone line," Tanyalee whispered. Farid swallowed hard. "Listen to me, Farid," Tanyalee whispered, "take these charms—" she handed her son a necklace with a key, a Star of David, and a scorpion amulet charm on it—"get in the dumbwaiter, and do NOT come out until sunrise. When the sun rises, go down into the basement and find a box labeled _Cairo 1933._ There are photographs in the box of people who will help you. Do you understand?"_

_"Mom, but—"_

_"I said _do you understand, _Farid?"_

_Farid opened his mouth to protest, but Tanyalee gave him a dangerous look. He closed his mouth and nodded. "Okay, go," she said, ushering him out of his bed. On her way to the dumbwaiter, she grabbed one of Farid's belts from the floor. She kissed her son as he climbed into the tiny elevator. _

_"I love you, Farid," she whispered, "whatever happens, remember that."_

_"I love you too, Mommylee," Farid said softly._

_Tanyalee smiled a little. Farid hadn't called her Mommylee since he was a little boy. She silently closed the door, and Farid heard her as she crept downstairs…_

_"Hello, Miss Warren."_

_Tanyalee whirled on the staircase to see a face she despised, a face she thought she'd never see again._

_"Lock-nah?" She whispered, her fingers tightening on the belt in her hand. "What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be dead! Ardeth killed you, I saw it myself!"_

_The man called Lock-nah smiled. "The Book of the Dead gives life," he crooned, "while the Book of the Living…takes life away."_

_Tanyalee's breath caught in her throat. "Ardeth told me he destroyed the Book," she whispered._

_"Well, it looks like your darling Ardeth lied," Lock-nah said with venom._

_Tanyalee gave him a dark look. "Ardeth ceased being my darling a long…long…time ago," she whispered. "Of, course, you wouldn't have known that, being in hell, as it were."_

_Lock-nah's gentle smile became a snarl. "In all my years of dealing with Medjai, Ardeth Bay was the only one I know of who never had a weakness," he hissed. "Times change. Now he has you."_

_"You'll find that I am no longer his weakness," she said, "for as I told you, I am no longer his darling."_

_Lock-nah laughed, and took a step closer. Tanyalee shifted into a defensive position. _

_"We'll see about that," he whispered, and he launched himself at her, whipping out a curved sword as he went. Tanyalee whipped the belt around and it caught Lock-nah in the face. He took a stunned step backwards, his hand flying to his face. With a vindictive smile, she kicked him in the chest, sending him tumbling down the stairs. She took a running start and jumped down the last three stairs, just out of reach of Lock-nah's weapon. However, he lashed out with his foot, sending her sprawling on the wooden floor. He shouted something in Arabic, and half a dozen men came flooding out of the great room, all holding machine guns trained on her. Tanyalee tripped three of them with her foot, leaping to her feet and snapping the belt across two others' faces. _

_Lock-nah seized her from behind, the curved blade at her throat._

_She struggled futilely, but he refused to release his hold, pressing the sharp knife into her throat._

_"Do not move, Miss Warren," he snarled in her ear._

_"That's Mrs. Daniels to you, you son of a bitch," she hissed back._

_He laughed softly. "Mrs. Daniels, huh? So, you were able to move on from Ardeth?"_

_Tanyalee fought again, but Lock-nah still wouldn't release her._

_"You will come with us, Tanyalee Daniels," he murmured, "for you are now my leverage."_

The last thing Farid had heard of his mother was her being dragged, kicking and screaming, out the front door. It was taking every ounce of his self-control not to go to her, but he remembered her instructions…and he was no use to her dead. As soon as the first rays of light filtered through the dumbwaiter door, Farid leapt out, running to the basement and opening the box from Cairo, the dusty box he hadn't opened in eight years. He yanked out the photographs of the O' Connell's and Ardeth Bay, and looked at the weapons in the glass case. He opened it, and placed the heavy ammunition belt around his shoulders. Then, he holstered the Colt pistols around his waist, next to the longish blade his father had taught him to use. He put the two forearm-length crossblades in his rucksack. After all, his mother would need them when he found her.

He searched for the O' Connell's in London, and found out that they were in Beijing. So, he knew his next best bet would be Cairo, to find this Ardeth Bay. Farid had managed to hitch a ride to Cairo on a supply plane, and as he walked up the dusty street, he threw the black Arabic scarf that his mother had given him around his face. There weren't many people out in the scorching heat that day, but there were enough to ask around about Ardeth Bay.

"Excuse me; do you know where I could find this man?"

"Have you seen the man in this picture?"

"Could you help me find this man?"

Farid walked for hours, asking first in English, then in Arabic, until he finally found an old man who seized the picture from his hand and looked at Farid incredulously.

"How do you know Ardeth Bay?" The man demanded in Arabic.

"I don't," replied Farid, "but my mother did. Please, if you know where he is, I need to find him. My mother's life could depend on it."

The old man looked at Farid suspiciously. "What is a young boy like you doing with a photo of a great Medjai warrior?"

Farid's tolerance was waning. "Please sir, I just need to find him. If you know where he is…"

The old man looked Farid over and seemed to deem him trustworthy, because he said, "You're in luck. Ardeth Bay rode into town yesterday with a small group of Medjai warriors. Look around for men in black robes with tattoos, and you will find Bay with them," he said.

"Thank you, so much," Farid said. The old man handed him the photograph and Farid started up the street.

_Please,_ Farid prayed in his head, _please, please, please let him help me. For my mother, please. Amen._


End file.
